On Trolls

To help you understand the creatures of my world, I will from time to time post information on them. I decided to randomly start with trolls. I know there are spelling errors and such. Just deal with it.



Trolls are vile humaniods that stand from anywhere from seven to ten feet. Their skin is normally greenish brown. They sometimes shade all the way up to yellow. Their skin is full of pus, pores, warts, mold, and fungus. Their skin is renown for their regeneration traits. Their hands are almost human. They are a finger short, and their nails are like jagged claws. Stuff sometimes grows out from underneath their nails. Their eyes are usually not seen by people who fight them. The skin of their body bulges farther out than their eyes, giving them a dark shadow. It is known, from dissections, that their sclera are mostly yellow. Their pupils are far larger than their cornea since they need to see out of their own darkness. Their cornea's are random colors. Blue, green, gray, hazel, brown, ect. Their backs, armpits, lower section, and nostrils are where their hair tends to grow. Their heads are scarcely covered with hair. Their hair is almost always gray. Most trolls tend to have no teeth. They tear their food apart with their claws, and then they put the food in their mouths. If a troll lives long enough for their claws to have rotten off, they will just take a rock to mush the food and then shallow the food. Trolls often do not wear clothing. The ones that do are normally the leaders of the pack and are very strong.
An old myth states that the trolls came from the earth itself. They were creatures that slept underground for ages. When man came along with their loud civilizations, the trolls clawed themselves out of the ground to silence the noise so that they can go back to sleep. This view, however, gives trolls a peacefull look, and trolls are far from peaceful. Another view, that seems to have been inspired by the myth, is that trolls come from the fungus on the earth. This seems possible. Most trolls lack bones. Trolls also reproduce asexually. A gray wart would appear one day on the troll. It would grow larger, and in a few days it would fall off with a new troll inside. It appears as though trolls can control their reproduction to match the size they need for their pack. Which means that as long as one of the pack is alive, the whole pack is still alive. However, their a few trolls that do have bones in them. There have never been more than one a pack. After a few studies it is now believed that trolls were something human or elven. It is believed that if a person gets filthy enough that the rot and mold on him would grow all over and eat out the brain. There are several ways to prove this theory. One is that all the bones found were mostly human. The rest (a very small portion) is elven. Another is that trolls appear in sporadic places on Mystara. There is no pattern to were they appear. Another is that most humanoid creatures have their own language. Even with creatures of the same species tend to have a language different from the rest of their species. Trolls, if someone tries hard enough to understand them, always speak in the native language, even to each other. Most humanoid creatures will speak to each other in their own species native language. Most trolls are generally unintelligent, so it is highly unlikely that trolls learned the native language and decided to use it. When a docter took a severed arm of a troll, he found that what we think is the skin of a troll is actually mold and fungus. If a person was to cut a troll, he would have to go at least 4 inches deep just to do any damage to a troll. This not only explains why trolls are hard to hit, but their regeneration aspect. It also explains why trolls are weak to fire. The mold appears to have grown so deep that it is rooted in whatever organs a troll has. Most of the organs a human has, trolls lack, however all trolls have at least one lung, heart, brain, stomach, and a way to process the food to their mold. The only waste trolls will leave behind is rocks, bones, and such.
Trolls have two interests in life. Food and possessions. They have a pack rat mentality where the more items they have, the better they feel. They never use the items they gain. If someone could sneak into a troll's den they would find several usuable items. There would also be several nonusuable items as most trolls take poor care of their items. Many items would be weather damaged, broken, or covered with blood and guts of their victims. Trolls don't hunt often. When they do they bring in enough food to last them at least a month. Their hunts can last up to a week. Trolls tend to be lazy and sleep a lot. They will put off their hunt until the very last minute. Trolls don't hunt just people. They will attack any living creature and take the bodies with them. The leader will always stay behind just incase the hunters come across something they can't handle. Trolls tend to travel in three to five hunting packs with six to eight trolls a pack. Their hunt can devastate the land around them. Trolls prefer meat, but when the hunt does not go well, they will tear down the trees and plants, and eat them. Trolls are smart enough to recognize and avoid danger, but they are not smart enough to work their way around it. It is possible to trick a troll into thinking that you are more dangerous than what you really are. Because trolls store their food for a least a month, a traveler will almost always smell a troll den long before they come across it (even if the traveler is down wind).
Trolls will almost never be encountered in an army. When you do see a troll in an army, it will mostly be because someone has them under mind control. Most of the time, a person will only come across trolls when they are hunting. If that person is lucky, he could stay out of the pack's sight. Though trolls are dangerous, they are only dangerous to the people surrounding their den at least once a month. Because of this, goverments tend not to be concern with the trolls. Governments also do not concern themselves with trolls often as the task of destroying a den completely would either require a good army or a well paid party of adventurers who have a good plan. Either way, the economic resources a goverment would spend on this is more than it's worth.
One final note on trolls, they are not smart enough to make sure that someone is dead. They only attack long enough to make sure that their target is no longer a threat. This means that a person can die a very slow and painful death at the hands of trolls. If you find youself in this position, it is probably better to figure out a way to kill yourself as rescue is highly unlikely.